Adventures of Spare Oom: the Tuition, Rent, and Centaurs in the City
by GwenTheTribble
Summary: posted on ao3, Adventures of Spare Oom: the Tuition, the Rent, and the Centaurs in the Apartment. The Pevensie's weren't from the 1940s. They were from the 90s and were sent to live with Kirke by their ambassador parents when violence in the middle east broke out. They eventually move to America and go to college, but everything changes when a search party comes through the portal.
1. Chapter 1

Edmund was heading for the vending machine that usually had an energy drink. He was pretty desperate at this point, but couldn't afford the 5 dollars for a Monster drink that some of the more entrepreneurial students were selling at select locations around campus. He was camped out in the library, using their Wi-Fi and the books that couldn't be checked out to write his paper. It was getting late, and he was one of those people who would burst into tears when extremely tired if you pushed him. He really didn't want to cry in front of any of these people. And a few of the other students looked as though him crying would set them off.

The vending machines were all at the end of a hallway where there was also a microwave and some weird taped up art and flyers for student films. He turned the corner to see a slender red headed girl kneeling on the ground with her arm inside a vending machine. She seemed to be stuck. "Oh thank God, someone's here. I've been here for-e-ver. Hey, I've got my purse right here, if I gave you like a dollar would you get me a Dr. Pepper?"

"Sure, but don't you want me to call someone or something?" Edmund asked, watching her sloppily dig through her bag with one hand. She made a sound of triumph before holding a crumpled dollar bill out to him. "Don't do that. We're not supposed to stick our hands inside the machines, I'll be like, fined or something." Edmund was dewrinkling and sticking the bill in the soda machine repeatedly. "Well how do you plan on getting out?" He asked, finally succeeding and punching the code in. "I'm waiting for my arm to get sweaty enough that I can just pull it out." She said, accepting the drink gratefully.

"So not to poke holes in your plan or anything, but are you sure that's going to work?" Edmund questioned while trying to pick out the least disgusting energy drink to pour in his triple red eye. It would probably kill him but it turned out that you don't really care about being alive when you're writing a paper at 1 in the morning. "Yeah totally. I saw this on an episode of Zoey 101 once so…" She trailed off, perhaps hoping that nickelodeon wouldn't lie to her like that. Edmund shrugged and selected a Red Bull. "Pouring it in your coffee huh? How long have you got to go?" She asked with understanding and an 'oh you poor thing' quality in her voice. "Oh I don't know. It's for this political science class. It's already twenty pages. It's kind of gotten away from me." He replied wearily.

The girl let out a low whistle. "What's your major?" she asked, taking a gulp of her soda. "Oh I'm going for foreign relations with a concentration in Human Rights and Humanitarian Policy. I want to be a discrimination lawyer. And you?" The red headed girl nodded with interest "oh I'm just here for a bachelors in dance. It was this whole deal I made with my aunt and uncle. They would pay for all of my ballet supplies and travel and things while I was under eighteen, and then I had to get a college degree so I would have something to fall back on, just in case. They didn't say what I had to major in though." She replied with a good natured smirk. Edmund smiled, liking when someone spotted loopholes and used them without hurting anyone.

"So I'm not saying this is a terrible plan but I am going to give you my number so if you decide this isn't going to work, give me a call. I think there's probably something I can do to help." He said, writing his number on a piece of ripped note book paper and handing it to her. "Thanks. I'll call you if it turns out Zoey 101 isn't completely scientifically accurate. I'm Rose by the way."

"Edmund." He said, smiling at her.

"Well Edmund, you had better get back to writing that paper. Some vulture has probably stolen your seat already." She said. Her green eyes sparked at him, and Edmund felt not like they knew each other, but that they had known the same thing as each other.

Returning to his seat in the library that, miracle of miracles, nobody had stolen. Chugging his coffee and beginning to type he felt his heart rate speed up. His hands shook as he typed and he felt as though he were going to be ill. He was glad that he had not broken into a cold sweat like a few of the harried students around him. One girl kept singing a little song about interest rates over and over again. Edmund worried for her sanity. Laughter. Loud laughter. He looked around for the source of the laughter to see that it was a boy at another table. His hysterical laughing jag seemed to be descending into panicked and desperate crying. Edmund sighed. He had seen people do that before, if this boy was like them he would soon pass out mid sob.

The libraries harried frantic silence descended back upon them and Edmund could almost hear the minutes ticking on. His phone buzzed half an hour later. It was an unknown number. "Hello?" Edmund said lowly, not wanting the really strict librarian that looked like a bird to kick him out. "Hey yeah, Eddy. Can I call you Eddy? I'm gonna doing it. So Eddy, it seems that those bastards at nickelodeon made up science. I can assure you that they will be receiving some very strongly worded complaints from me. Anyway, you mentioned something about busting me loose?" A lilting feminine voice said. "Sure yeah. The words on my page are starting to move around, so… I guess that means I need a break? I'll go look in the janitor's closets for something." He said and hung up.

It took 3 closets before he found wd-40. He was trembling slightly and felt like he was moving very fast. "Sup Eddy, where ya been?" Rose greeted. Her legs were drawn up to her chest and she was hugging them with her free arm. "Had to find something to get you out. Now move over a little and hold still." She did what he said, smiling. She had a gap between her teeth and her face had a spray of freckles. Edmund lifted the metal flap and looked inside as much as he could until he saw just where to spray. He stuck the nozzle up into the machine to spray along her arm. "Wiggle it a little." He told her. She did, and he heard he arm slip free a little more. He repeated what he had done before. "Alright, now try." She yanked her arm free, and they both heard the sucking slapping sound of it. She had a candy bar in her clenched hand.

"Ugh, thanks. I can finally go home. 3 hours and all for a kit kat!" She grinned at him, revealing the gap between her top front teeth again. He couldn't help but smile back. "Wow. Don't you look exhausted. You staying?" She asked, as they both started strolling in the same direction. "No. I think I'll just head home, I'm feeling pretty… Existential crisis-y…So probably just want to head home and collapse before I have to wake up and go to work." Edmund remarked. "Oh. Where do you work?" She asked curiously. "This bookstore café called Everybody Reads. Some days I'm a waiter there and others I'm a clerk."

"Is it nice? Working in a bookstore?" She asked, unwrapping the kit kat. "Oh yeah. It's peaceful, really. I really like it. How do you pay for the tuition that is the same as the price of a private island?" He inquired. "I do some low level modeling stuff and my Aunt and Uncle help with some of it. It's hard fitting in a job with all the dancing." She bit into the broken apart candy. They stepped out of the door, shivering slightly. "Hey Eddy, you didn't mention what your last name is?"

"Pevensie. Edmund Pevensie. Yours?" He said, turning to her. The New York skyline was lit up beyond them. "Rose Reilly."

"It's nice to meet you, Rose Reilly." He smiled. She smiled back at him. "It's nice to meet you Edmund Pevensie." They turn to go their separate ways, Edmund back to the apartment he and his siblings shared, and she towards the dorms.


	2. Chapter 2

The small apartment was dark when he finally got there, and even the couple upstairs had stopped fighting for the day. He walked softly down the hall, not wanting to wake his surely exhausted siblings. He was glad that they were all back together again, and all of their salaries made them capable of moving out of the dorms. They were lucky to have found this apartment, though it was near the river that kind of smelled.

Edmund kicked off his shoes and dropped his trousers on the floor of his bedroom. He clumsily undid the buttons off his button up and climbed into his bed wearing a t-shirt and pants.

"Edmund! Wake up!" Lucy pounded on the door. Edmund jolted awake breathing heavily. "Wake up!" She yelled again. He fumbled for his phone to check the time and was shocked to see that he had slept too late. "I'm up!" he called to her, trying to make that God awful noise stop. "Hurry!" She called. He jumped out of bed and pulled out a pair of dark jeans and a sweater, hurrying into them. He was pulling on his shoes while hopping out of the door and down the hall. Lucy was in the kitchen and held out a plate of toast to him. "Why didn't the Costa's fight? Are they alright?" Edmund questioned, as he usually relied on their early morning fights to get to work and classes on time.

"Mrs. Costa threw him out last night before you got home. Don't worry, I saw him buying flowers at the minimart this morning when I was running. He'll be back by three." She told him while he stuffed his phone in his satchel and the toast in his mouth. "He better be. I have to go." He said, running out the door.

Mr. Costa was sitting on the steps and waved at Edmund when he walked past him. He had missed his bus, so he would have to ride the subway. The air was cold and he hunched against the breeze. The subways were crowded and made him miss horses and clean Narnian air. He really missed them when he nearly face planted into the extremely hairy chest of a man wearing a t-shirt with a deep V-neck that read: 'I shaved my balls for this?'. He finally reached the bookstore, only five minutes late. He rushed in, the doorbell jingling. "You're late." Alex commented. "Overslept." Edmund said simply.

"Well I covered for you with Dakota. Told her you were in the back double checking how many Andrea Gibson books we have in stock." Alex said, stepping out from behind the counter. "Thanks." Edmund replied. "Take this out to table four. The crepes are for the blonde girl, omelet for the girl with the sleeve tattoos, and the oatmeal for the guy." They told him while handing him a round tray with food on it. Edmund hurried to the table and began placing the dishes in front of their recipients.

Lucy's POV:

Lucy sat in her first class of the day. The lecturer was saying something about ethics. She was a queen of Narnia, she didn't need to hear about ethics from a man with a ponytail and a sports car. Instead, she was finishing her homework for another class. She wanted it to be done early, because that professor was kind of a jerk about her being so young. She had taken advantage of the schooling and tutors her parents had given her and so had graduated early. It had been especially easy to be motivated into doing extra work when she knew that doing it would reunite her with her siblings, the only people who didn't treat her like a child. She had argued with her parents for three months before they agreed to let her live without them and go to Columbia University. It had been a little easier when she told them she was going to be a doctor.

Lucy did her homework quickly, knowing that she would need it done before she had to go to work. She had a shift at Forever 21, also known as hell run by white girls with Starbucks. The lecturer droned on while a pretty East Asian girl slipped into the seat next to Lucy. Lucy normally wouldn't have taken much notice, but the girl appeared to be college age and had a baby in a sling. The girl bounced the baby slightly and smiled at Lucy when she saw her looking at the baby. "Do you mind if I feed her?" The pretty girl whispered. "Sure, go ahead." Lucy whispered back. The girl went about undoing the buttons of her shirt and pulling a breast out for the baby to latch on to. Lucy went back to her homework.

Half an hour later the class was over and Lucy was hurrying to pack up and leave when the girl paused and turned back to her. "Thanks for being alright with me feeding him. Some people aren't." She told Lucy. "Its fine, it's totally fine. She's very cute." Lucy assured her. "Oh don't I know it. I swear I hear about how adorable she is more than I hear a hello. Not that I'm complaining! It's nice to know that people don't find my baby repulsive." She smirked. Lucy laughed, high and rolling, like a burbling brook. "I'm Tammy and this is Pansy" She said, smiling and gesturing to the baby. "I'm Lucy." They smiled at each other, before gathering their things and going their separate ways.

Lucy was trying to hurry down the sidewalk, ignoring the occasional catcall, when she began to feel as though someone was following her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up instinctively and she glanced around, slipping her hand into her pocket to reassure herself that the mace she carried was there. She kept walking, putting her feet down a bit more firmly than before, liking the way the heels clacked on the pavement. It wasn't long before she reached the store, and forgot the sensation of being watched when she stepped into the loud and shiny store.

Edmunds POV:

The day was drawing to a close but people still streamed into the bookstore. It was a popular place, for certain groups of people. The woman who founded it had intended it to be a safe space for the MOGGI and disabled, the immigrants and the people of color. It was known to sometimes refuse police officers in uniform service, and for its policy on only hiring people like the ones it catered to. It was beloved by many, especially those who had never been in such a place. They didn't write calories on the main menus, as that could be triggering for those with Eating Disorders, but did have some separate menus with them. They had a fairly large supply of books on CD, especially for being a rather small place. Name a LGBTI+ book, they had it. A CD, a movie, a book, or a magazine that was about the marginalized or created by the marginalized, it was at Everybody Reads. There was a bulletin board of doctors who were good for transitioning and people who could take someone in, reminders about free clinics and when Dakota would be offering free and discounted therapy sessions.

It was a nice place to work, and Edmund enjoyed it. He missed Narnia, they all did, and he wouldn't exactly call himself content or even satisfied, but he was managing. Susan had accepted the change better than any of them, but not one of them thought that she didn't miss it. Edmund wiped the counter and untied his white apron, as his shift was over. Before he left he had Teddy ring him up a cup of coffee to go, and paid for it before hurrying out into the brisk breeze. His bag over his shoulder and the hot drink in his hands, he started walking home. He caught the subway just before people got off work, and so it wasn't as hellish as it could have been.

He got off the subway a few blocks from the apartment, wanting some fresh air. Or as fresh of air as you could get, in New York. The blood curdling shriek nearly made him spill the hot coffee down his front, and his head whipped around towards the source in time for the second scream. He hurried into the mini mart and darted to the back door, opening it with his heart pounding but his hands steady. He found a young boy, maybe thirteen, standing next to a dumpster, shaking like a leaf. Edmund reached out and pushed the boy behind him slightly, looking down the dark alleys for what had made him so scared.

A woman appeared behind them, talking worriedly to the boy, hustling him inside, barely sparing Edmund a glance. Edmund looked down the seemingly empty alleys one more time before going back inside. The woman was asking the boy what had scared him so much. "I-It was a-a Tiger!" The boy stuttered, before Edmund slipped out the door and back into the cold.

A tiger? Someone else may have dismissed this as a child's over active imagination, but Edmund wasn't in the habit of not believing in something just because it seems like its magic or impossible. Not anymore.

He walked home, wondering what a tiger would be doing in the city, if in fact there was a tiger. He was still a mostly logical person. He was so lost in thought that he hardly heard the rough voice in call "Your Majesty?" from the shadowed alleyway of his building. He did hear it, however, and stopped dead in his tracks. He strained his ears, and heard the voice call again, "My King?"

Edmund's stomach nearly fell out of his feet. "Jalur?" He stage whispered into the darkness. The tiger made a growling sound and stepped out of the shadows, with something like hesitation. "Jalur." Edmund whispered again, overwhelmed at seeing his old friend and palace guard. "King Edmund." Jalur greeted with an animal bow. Suddenly Edmund snapped out of his extreme shock, and remembered that they were on a residential street of NYC and anyone could see them. "Come." He said quickly.

The tiger matched his swift pace and followed him into the small entrance of the square building. They kept silent as Edmund led him up the hardly well-lit stairs, and they were lucky they didn't meet anyone on the way. Their apartment was on the third floor, He unlocked the door quickly and held it open for Jalur to leap past him. He had barely locked the door and slid the chain into place before he had been knocked to the ground. He laughed and grinned over the tiger's excitement, such a display rarely seen from the most grouchy palace guard.

"Your Majesty what is this place? How did you come to be young?" He rumbled. "It's hard to explain, and to do so would take rather a long time. I shall tell you the story, but first I must ask how you came to be here?" Edmund said, and he almost felt like a king again.

His coffee sat in his hands forgotten, the tiger before him seemed unable to stop looking at him. "We were searching for you and your royal siblings, your majesty. General Oreius led us through a place where we could barely move through the trees, and we were then in this loud place." The tiger said simply. "Searching?" Edmund asked. "You went to hunt the white stag seven days ago and did not return." He replied with his gravelly voice.

"Who went searching?" The just king asked suddenly. "General Oreius, Captain Sepphora, Sir Tumnus, Guards Lambert and Briony, and me." Jalur told him. "Did they- did they all come here?" Edmund asked, terrible possibilities flitting through his head. "Yes."

"Where are they? Why are you alone?" Edmund questioned. Two centaurs a faun and two talking wolves loose in the city? They would be caught and experimented on!

"I know not where they are your majesty. The general and captain went east together, the wolves went south. I went north. Sir Tumnus went west." The tiger told him.

Edmund reached for his phone, pulse rate picking up. "When you went through the trees, what was it like? Where you came through?"

Jalur thought for a moment before saying "it was a large grassy place, with stone paths." _Oh Aslan no._ Edmund fumbled with his phone and dialed Peter, bouncing in his nervousness. "Hello?" Peter's voice came through. "Peter! Listen, there's not a lot of time to explain. The portal opened back up. A search party came through. We've only been missing for a week. They started in central park and went west, south, and east. I have Jalur with me and I'll go look for them too." He told his brother anxiously. "What? I mean, alright yeah I'll go search, but. Just what?" His brother was understandably shocked and confused. "So you'll search… Jalur how long would you say you walked before you found me?"

"Perhaps fifteen minutes?" Said the tiger. "alright, check east of central park, everything with twenty minutes I guess? It didn't take Jalur very long so I think they must have started near the end that's close to us. I'll call the girls." Both boys hung up.

"What is that rectangle?" Jalur rumbled. "I'll explain as much as I can later. Stay here!" Edmund said firmly, hurrying out the door and dialing Lucy's number next.

"Hello?" She answered.

"Lucy, you're not going to believe this."


	3. Chapter 3

Peter's POV:

Edmunds call ended abruptly and Peter slipped his phone back into his pocket. He allowed himself to stand in a daze for all of five seconds before forcing himself to begin walking, feeling like a high king once more. That's what they don't tell you, when you get crowned. How sometimes people stop being worthy. How if you get treated like a dumb animal, sometimes you become a dumb animal.

Peter had just left a class on Accounting for International & Public Affairs and had decided that they could afford groceries today and wouldn't have to make do with the McDonalds dollar menu. It happened sometimes. Before he got halfway down the block his phone was buzzing, the screen telling him that Edmund was calling. "Hello?"

"Peter! Listen, there's not a lot of time to explain."

And this was how Peter found himself running around in a twenty minute perimeter of the area east of the end of central park that was nearer to their apartment. He had his phones map app to track what streets he had already frantically run down. Edmund didn't need to tell Peter that they had to be the first ones to find them, because if they weren't, they would never hear from their friends again. Peter had called Susan, telling her to search the west. She had taken it rather well, all things considered. All things being that talking animals and mythological creatures from the land that they were monarchs of had stepped into the land where last week Edmund made a chart about the maximum amount they could spend on pasta for the rest of the year. And everyone had considered it useful and informative.

Peter was coming up on Thomas Jefferson Park when he heard a woman in it say " .God." He decides to go see what she's looking at, torn between wanting to find them and not wanting them to be seen. The woman's voice he heard had come from the direction of the area behind the public restrooms.

His heart stopped when he rounded the corner. He's too late. She's already got her phone out, taking pictures of the extremely confused looking General Oreius and Captain Sepphora. He's so busy wondering why she hasn't screamed that it takes him a moment to realize what she's saying. "Your costuming is just amazing! Are you guys filming a movie nearby? I assumed they just did this stuff with like, animation or something! Is it robotic?" She thought they were actors. She thought they were actors!

He whipped out his phone and walked briskly up to them, staring at the screen as though he was reading something very important. "Mr. Smith, Ms. Brightly, they're ready to start filming again." He told the bewildered centaurs, before swinging his gaze over the woman and letting it drop to the phone as though he'd just noticed. His heart was pounding, he wasn't used to lying on the spot like this. It was something more suited to Susan or Ed. "Are you taking pictures? You're not allowed to do that." He said while attempting the tone of a micromanaging personal assistant.

"So what if I did?" She asked with typical New Yorker aggression.

"Delete them." Peter demanded. "Please, this is a top secret project." He added.

"No! They're going on Insta. What are you guys filming anyway?" She asserted, and Peter knew she wasn't going to back down.

"So you didn't use the cloud?"

"No. Why?" She asked in confused wariness. Peter gulped. He was ultra-aware of his arm reaching out and snatching the phone out of her hand. Hurriedly looking at it while Oreius stepped in front of the woman's way, he was vexed to see that in the transfer from her hand to his the screen had gotten locked. Only one thing to do, though he was reluctant to do it. Oreius was still blocking the woman's path no matter how she tried to reach Peter and her phone.

Peter dropped the woman's phone, hearing it clatter on the sidewalk at his feet, and brought his heel into it. Hard. Once, twice, three times. He ground the twisted remains with his heel. "We have to go, right now." He told his two friends and loyal subjects urgently.

The three of them took off running with Peter leading them. _Get them off the streets _is his only thought. He was ducking through every alley way he could before he allowed them to slip up the main street. The main street being somewhere along Third Avenue and E 116th street. Peter knew that there was a small store there that Lucy liked to go to sometimes that might have just what they needed. "Hide your selves, allow no one to see you. I will return shortly." The centaurs nodded their assent.

The bell on the door of the small dark shop jangled when Peter opened it and he knew he had to hurry. An old woman manning the counter looked up at the sound and gave him a sweet smile. "Hello you man."

"Hello. Do you have any really oversized pillow cases or sacks?"

"Oh, you've got some of those new big trendy pillows. My granddaughters got one of those on her bed. Looks nice, but it's like another smaller bed! We've got some of those right over here." She said and shuffled over to a shelf. "What colors did you have in mind?"

"Ugh… something either black or beige? If you don't have that maybe a navy blue. Two please." He pulled out his phone and sent a quick group text to his siblings to tell them that he'd found them, with some difficulties.

The old woman pulled out two black folded pillow cases and set them on the counter, typing on the cash register. "That'll be 20 dollars."

"Oh! And I need a large sort of squarish cloth, like a shawl, or a pashmina even."

"Maybe one of those right over there?" She said pointing with a wizened old finger to a rack of large pieces of cloth, covered in a print that brought to mind Arabian Nights. Peter hurriedly picked out an indigo piece, and saw that it did seem to be a large wrap of some sort.

He put it on the counter in front of the old woman who rung it up. "27 dollars please." He inwardly cringed at the thought of spending money on cloth. But what could he do? He had to them back to the apartment. Along this line of thought Peter handed her his credit card, going through the motions of the purpose. "Have a nice day."

"You to." He called over his shoulder as he stepped back into the bright sunlight. He looked over his shoulder before he ducked into the alley way with his bundle under his arm. "Oreius? Sepphora?" He whispered, before hearing the clip clop of horse hooves stepping out of the shadows. "Take off those bags and your swords and give them to me." The general and the captain hurried to obey, knowing their high king, for all he was different looking these days. They hand him first the bags and then the swords, and he wraps the all up in the cloth so that no one could see the weapons.

"Put these over your heads. It's a disguise, so people think you're carriage horses." It might not have been one of his better plans.

The centaurs might have been a proud race, but they knew that now was no time to uphold dignity. The transformation completed, and being the best he could do on such short notice, they hurried back onto the main street again, making better time. People still stared, but more in a 'What's with the horses?' sort of way. They sped down E 116the Street, passing the McDonalds and the Wendies and Peters never been more glad to see them. Finally he pulled them through the apartment buildings doors, muttering for them to duck their heads down. He pulled the hoods off but motioned for them to stay silent. They crept up the stairs together until they reached the Pevensie's own apartment. Peter fumbled for his keys, realizing his hands were shaking with adrenaline. He swings the door open and motions them in, relief flooding him when he finally closes the door and locked it.

The centaurs sweep into the bows they've been waiting to give. "Your majesty." Oreius started, but he seemed at a loss for words.

"Your majesty. Is king Edmund returning?" Jalur asked. Stepping out from behind the end of the couch that was against the wall.

"Not that I know of. He went to help Susan look for Tumnus I believe. I must go help Lucy find Lambert and Briony, excuse me." He told them firmly, knowing that they still had three friends in danger.


End file.
